Philips Evnia 32M2N8900 Review | Trusted Reviews

Verdict

The Philips Evnia 32M2N8900 is an impressive gaming monitor that ticks all the right boxes with sublime image quality with serious detail and excellent blacks and colours alongside a great selection of inputs and stylish looks. It’s only very small things to watch out for, such as the thinner speakers and slightly cumbersome OSD navigation.

Introduction

The Philips Evnia 32M2N8900 isn’t the brand’s first QD-OLED panel, but from a personal perspective, it is my most hotly anticipated of the Evnia range.

That’s down to a few things. Firstly, the fact this is a 32-inch 4K 240Hz QD-OLED display ticks all the right boxes for a high power panel in 2024, while its sleek white and silver colourway looks the business, too.

Its price tag is reflective of its sublime power and looks, coming in at £1039.99/€1099. That’s right in the middle of the likes of the MSI MPG 321URX and the award-winning Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 (2024) that have been out for a few months already.

The Evnia 32M2N8900 therefore has to do a fair bit to mark itself out as one of the best gaming monitors we’ve tested. I’ve been using it for the last couple of weeks to see how well it fares.

Design

• Stylish white and silver colourway
• Excellent input selection
• Lots of stand adjustment

From the outset, the Evnia 32M2N8900 looks fantastic. With its speckled stand and generally white and silver appearance, it’s a wonderfully modern monitor that fits well into modern, forward-thinking setups. That’s generally the idea of these Philips Evnia panels, as seen previously with the Evnia 34M2C8600 which I’ve praised in the past.

The 32-inch screen is large, while there are also minimal bezels around the top and sides. They’re quite even in width though, which makes me think of the old unibody MacBooks with their even bezels around the screen – a nice nod.

There isn’t much in the way of branding on the Evnia 32M2N8900 either, with small Evnia and Philips logos in the bottom left and right corners respectively. The reverse of this panel is a lot more angular and boxier, also housing Philips’ innovative Ambiglow LEDs which project light onto the rear wall for added ambience. That’s found on some other Evnia panels, as well as a lot of Philips’ own TVs, too.

The rest of this monitor’s stand is also silver, and made of a thick metal, so is rather sturdy, while also coming with a small hook for resting a pair of headphones on. There’s some decent adjustment here, with 130mm of height adjustment and solid scope for tilt and swivel action, too. The Evnia 32M2N8900 doesn’t go into a portrait orientation, though.

Assembly here is as simple as with other AOC and Philips monitors I’ve used in the past. It’s a case of screwing the base in from the bottom of the panel, and you’re pretty much done. There is also a bracket included for VESA mounting it to a bracket or wall mount if you don’t want to use the included stand at all.

The input selection on offer with the Evnia 32M2N8900 is also fantastic, with a pair of HDMI 2.1 ports, a singular DP 1.4 and a USB-C that supports DP Alt mode with both video and up to 90W of power delivery.

You also get the benefit of an extensive USB hub with a USB-B port for powering a pair of two USB-A data ports. There isn’t a KVM switch though, which is featured on the likes of the MSI MPG 321URX, for instance.

It’s a similar selection of inputs to Samsung’s Odyssey G8 (2024), although this Evnia option adds a modern and convenient USB-C, which is welcome for running modern laptops such as my 2021 MacBook Pro with a singular cable.

The back of the Evnia 32M2N8900 comes with a singular means of controlling its extensive OSD with a joystick housed on the right rear corner as you look at the monitor. This is also a power button, although there is only a small a visible LED for denoting when the monitor is on or off.

Image Quality

• Gorgeous blend of high-quality, smooth images
• Impressive black levels and contrast
• Brightness not as strong as other panel types

It should probably come as no surprise that the Evnia 32M2N8900 serves up some incredible image quality thanks to its 32-inch 4K QD-OLED panel. It offers some fantastic contrast, deep blacks and excellent colours in a range of content, from games to movies and more besides.

That’s backed up in playing the likes of more cinematic titles such as Cyberpunk 2077, while running through some fast-paced rally stages in Dirt Rally 2.0 showcased the silky smooth motion of the panel’s 240Hz refresh rate. It’s a match made in heaven.

The sheer quality on offer here was also reflected in some great results using my trusty colorimeter. With this, it proved the Evnia 32M2N8900 to provide some brilliant colour accuracy with 100% sRGB, 98% DCI-P3 and 93% Adobe RGB coverage. This means the Evnia 32M2N8900 is able to provide virtually perfect colours for both mainstream productivity and more colour sensitive workloads.

As a QD-OLED panel, the measured 0.01 black level is perhaps unsurprising, but representative of deep, inky blacks, while the 16470:1 contrast ratio proves this panel to offer some seriously impressive dynamic range. That’s expected from a QD-OLED screen like this one, although is nonetheless impressive.

Where this panel falls a tad short is with its brightness. In SDR mode, it measured a peak of 217.7 nits, which is reasonable, although unremarkable. OLED screens have never been too impressive with their peak SDR brightness, hence Philips quoting the Evnia 32M2N8900 to have a peak of 250 nits. However, enable HDR and it shoots up to 1000 nits in a 1% window, allowing for some excellent vibrancy.

Software and Features

• Lots of configuration in OSD
• Speakers are just okay

The Evnia 32M2N8900 comes with an extensive OSD that’s navigated by the small joystick on the panel’s reverse. Here you can cycle through different panel modes based on game genre, such as racing or FPS titles, fiddle with the panel’s clever Ambiglow lighting system, enable any on-screen crosshairs, choose inputs, volume control and more besides.

There’s a lot of functionality, although the joystick feels a little cumbersome for controlling the OSD. Samsung’s Odyssey G8 OLED offers the fun of Tizen OS, which adds smart TV-type functionality, and is arguably easier to navigate.

Unlike some other monitors, the Evnia 32M2N8900 comes with speakers built-in, even if they are only a pair of 5W options. They’re serviceable for monitor speakers in a general sense, although lack depth and detail compared to a dedicated soundbar or separate units.

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